Politeness in East Asia

Politeness in East Asia
Author: Dániel Z. Kádár
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2011-09-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 113949757X

We use politeness every day when interacting with other people. Yet politeness is an impressively complex linguistic process, and studying it can tell us a lot about the social and cultural values of social groups or even a whole society, helping us to understand how humans 'encode' states of mind in their words. The traditional, stereotypical view is that people in East Asian cultures are indirect, deferential and extremely polite - sometimes more polite than seems necessary. This revealing book takes a fresh look at the phenomenon, showing that the situation is far more complex than these stereotypes would suggest. Taking examples from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Singaporean Chinese, it shows how politeness differs across countries, but also across social groups and subgroups. This book is essential reading for those interested in intercultural communication, linguistics and East Asian languages.

The Syntax of Nonsententials

The Syntax of Nonsententials
Author: Ljiljana Progovac
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027233578

This volume brings the data that many in formal linguistics have dismissed as peripheral straight into the core of syntactic theory. By bringing together experts from syntax, semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, language acquisition, aphasia, and pidgin and creole studies, the volume makes a multidisciplinary case for the existence of nonsententials, which are analyzed in various chapters as root phrases and small clauses (Me; Me First!; Him worry?!; Class in session), and whose distinguishing property is the absence of Tense, and, with it, any syntactic phenomena that rely on Tense, including structural Nominative Case. Arguably, the lack of Tense specification is also responsible for the dearth of indicative interpretations among nonsententials, as well as for their heavy reliance on pragmatic context. So pervasive is nonsentential speech across all groups, including normal adult speech, that a case can be made that continuity of grammar lies in nonsentential, rather than sentential speech.

The Languages of Japan and Korea

The Languages of Japan and Korea
Author: Nicolas Tranter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2012
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0415462878

The Languages of Japan and Korea provides detailed descriptions of the major varieties of languages in the region, both modern and pre-modern, within a common format, producing a long-needed introductory reference source. Korean, Japanese, Ainu, and representative members of the main groupings of the Ryukyuan chain are discussed for the first time in great detail in a single work. The volume is divided into language sketches, the majority of which are broken down into sections on phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax and lexicon. Specific emphasis is placed on aspects of syntactic interest, including speech levels, honorifics and classifiers. Each language variety is represented in Roman-based transcription, although its own script (where there is such orthography) and IPA transcriptions are used sparingly where appropriate. The dialects of both the modern and oldest forms of the languages are given extensive treatment, with a primary focus on the differences from the standard language. These synchronic snapshots are complemented by a discussion of both the genetic and areal relationships between languages in the region. With contributions from a variety of scholars of the highest reputation, The Language of Japan and Korea is a much needed and highly useful tool for professionals and students in linguistics, as well as area studies specialists.

A Reference Grammar of Japanese

A Reference Grammar of Japanese
Author: Samuel Elmo Martin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 1290
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780824828189

This title explains the use of Japanese words such as wa, ga and mo looking at the rules and meanings of words in their literary forms.

The Comparative Syntax of Korean and Japanese

The Comparative Syntax of Korean and Japanese
Author: Yutaka Sato
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2023-12-21
Genre:
ISBN: 0198896468

This book provides a detailed survey of Korean and Japanese syntax from a comparative perspective, based within a generative framework. Yukata Sato and Sungdai Cho demonstrate that while the two languages exhibit remarkably similar morphosyntactic features, they behave differently in specific types of construction, with the main differences observed in genitive marking, sentence negation, Negative Polarity Items, the formation of causatives, and passivization. The book also explores pragmatic and sociolinguistic issues in the two languages, and shows that they differ in the perception and realization of 'givenness' as a topic marker and in the influence of relationships of power and distance on the use of honorifics. The authors further offer additional context by exploring the typological relationship between Japanese and Korean and the surrounding languages such as Ainu, and the Chinese and Altaic languages, as well as providing socio-cultural and historical background.

Language Change in East Asia

Language Change in East Asia
Author: T. E. McAuley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136844686

This book adopts a wide focus on the range of East Asian languages, in both their pre-modern and modern forms, within the specific topic area of language change. It contains sections on dialect studies, contact linguistics, socio-linguistics and syntax/phonology and deals with all three major languages of East Asia: Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Individual chapters cover pre-Sino-Japanese phonology, nominalizers in Chinese, Japanese and Korean; Japanese loanwords in Taiwan Mandarin; changes in Korean honorifics; the tense and aspect system of Japanese; and language policy in Japan. The book will be of interest to linguists working on East Asian languages, and will be of value to a range of general linguists working in comparative or historical linguistics, socio-linguistics, language typology and language contact.

An Introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

An Introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language
Author: Michiel Kamermans
Publisher:
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2010-03
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9789081507110

Starting at the very basics and working its way up to important language constructions, "An introduction to Japanese" offers beginning students, as well as those doing self-study, a comprehensive grammar for the Japanese language. Oriented towards the serious learner, there are no shortcuts in this book: no romanised Japanese for ease of reading beyond the introduction, no pretending that Japanese grammar maps perfectly to English grammar, and no simplified terminology. In return, this book explains Japanese the way one may find it taught at universities, covering everything from basic to intermediary Japanese, and even touching on some of the more advanced constructions.

The Blackwell Companion to Syntax

The Blackwell Companion to Syntax
Author: Martin Everaert
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 3575
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1405178418

*** Pre-Order The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, second edition, publishing December 2017. Find out more at www.companiontosyntax.com *** This long-awaited reference work marks the culmination of numerous years of research and international collaboration by the world's leading syntacticians. There exists no other comparable collection of research that documents the development of syntax in this way. Under the editorial direction of Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, this 5 volume set comprises 70 case studies commissioned specifically for this volume. The 80 contributors are drawn from an international group of prestigious linguists, including Joe Emonds, Sandra Chung, Susan Rothstein, Adriana Belletti, Jim Huang, Howard Lasnik, and Marcel den Dikken, among many others. A unique collection of 70 newly-commissioned case studies, offering access to research completed over the last 40 years. Brings together the world’s leading syntacticians to provide a large and diverse number of case studies in the field. Explores a comprehensive range of syntax topics from an historical perspective. Investigates empirical domains which have been well-documented and which have played a prominent role in theoretical syntax at some stage in the development of generative grammar. Serves as a research tool for not only theoretical linguistics but also the various forms of applied linguistics. Contains an accessible alphabetical structure, with an index integral to each volume featuring keywords and key figures. Each multi-volume set is also accompanied by a CD Rom of the entire Companion. Like the prestigious Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics series, this multi-volume work, in the new The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Linguistics series, can be relied upon to deliver the quality and expertise with which Blackwell Publishing’s linguistics list is associated.